How 50 million USDT disappeared due to a copy address oversight – a security lesson for every trader

On December 20th, the cryptocurrency world trembled at the news of a massive loss. One trader fell victim to an address poisoning attack, losing nearly 50 million USDT in a single transaction. Worse still, this incident revealed a fundamental vulnerability in how we manage wallet addresses – a weakness that everyone should take seriously.

Anatomy of the scam: how address poisoning works

The attack scheme was clever yet simple. It all started when the victim sent a test transaction of 50 USDT to their wallet. This small action served as a signal to the scammer, who was monitoring blockchain activity.

In preparation for the attack, the perpetrator created a fake address with a distinctive feature: the first four and last four characters matched the victim’s legitimate wallet. Why choose such a method? Most modern wallets and block explorers truncate long address strings, displaying an ellipsis in the middle, like “…” ( for example: 0xBAF4…F8B5). This way, the fake address in its shortened form looked indistinguishable from the real one.

Next, the attacker sent a small amount of cryptocurrency from this counterfeit address to the victim, effectively “poisoning” their transaction history. When the trader proceeded to transfer the main amount, they copied the recipient address from the last transaction – a sacred step for any attacker.

From transfer to laundering: 30 minutes was enough

The result was devastating. 49,999,950 USDT went directly to the scammer’s account. The attacker’s actions were lightning-fast – within half an hour, the funds were exchanged for DAI, converted to approximately 16,690 ETH, and laundered through Tornado Cash to obscure digital traces.

Specter investigators, analyzing the case, expressed helplessness: “Such a huge loss due to a simple mistake. It only took a few seconds to copy the address from a legitimate source rather than from the history, and this could have been avoided."

Desperate attempt at recovery – and no solution

The victim, realizing the tragedy, sent a message on-chain to the attacker proposing a white-hat deal: a $1 million reward in exchange for returning 98% of the stolen funds. The proposal remained unanswered. By December 21st, the funds had not been recovered.

How to protect yourself from address poisoning

Cybersecurity experts warn that, as the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies grows, these low-tech yet highly profitable attacks are becoming increasingly common.

To avoid a similar scenario:

Download addresses from trusted sources. Never copy the recipient’s address from transaction history. Instead, always use the “Receive” tab in your wallet.

Maintain a whitelist of contacts. Most modern wallets allow adding trusted addresses to a whitelist. This simple solution can protect you from mistakes when manually entering addresses.

Verify the full address before confirming. Consider using security devices that require physical confirmation of the entire destination address before finalizing the transaction. This additional layer of verification can be decisive.

The story of the trader who lost nearly 50 million USDT is not just another anecdote from the crypto world – it’s a reminder that in the digital financial system, the greatest threats sometimes lurk in the least expected places.